Clinton Just Eviscerated Trump on Abortion During Debate

“I will defend Roe v. Wade and I will defend women’s rights to make their own health care decisions.”


At tonight’s final presidential debate in Las Vegas, host Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump whether he would like the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the United States. Trump evaded the question, reiterating his promise to appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices and said the question of legal abortion should be left up to the states.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, used the moment as an opportunity to offer a stirring defense of a woman’s right to choose. “We have come too far to have that turn back now,” Clinton said, reminding the audience that Trump has “said women should be punished; that there should be some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions. And I could just not be more opposed to that kind of thinking.”

In a follow-up question, Wallace asked Clinton about her opposition to a ban on late-term abortions. Clinton spoke about the “heartbreaking” decisions that often lead to this procedure (typically, late-term abortions are the result of a mother’s health complication or a severe fetal abnormality), saying, “I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions.”

Trump replied by twisting Clinton’s position on late-term abortion: “Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother.”

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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